November 6, 2008 – 10:36 am
Last weekend, Holly and I went to see the always-excelent-live Billy Bragg at Duke’s Page Auditorium. The show was part of Duke Performance’s Art/Politics/Now series of events.
Billy played an awesome solo set (~2 hours!) touching on old favorites and ranging to songs from his latest album. He opened with (the surprisingly racy!) Ingrid Bergman, a track from the Mermaid Avenue album that paired Bragg with Wilco to put words to lyrics mined from Woody Guthrie’s archives. He finished up with show-openers The Watson Twins joining Billy to perform the hymn-like Sing Their Souls Back Home.
Bragg’s new album is titled Mr. Love and Justice, but much of the night’s set focused on the justice, highlighted by the Clash-inspired Milkman of Human Kindness and the opener, Help Save the Youth of America. Billy provided a lot of very entertaining between-song banter. I think that his back-story of the song Ingrid Bergman was probably longer than the playing of the song itself.
It was an absolutely great show. I’m a firm believer in the power of one man and a guitar.
October 21, 2008 – 2:15 pm
Holly and I went to see the Magnetic Fields on Saturday. They were playing at the Meymandi Concert Hall at the Progress Energy Performing Arts Center. I have to admit that Holly and I hadn’t really payed much attention to the last MagFields album. We were mostly going due to the strength of past work and probably weren’t as excited about the show as we should’ve been.
So… the show was wonderful. They played a lot of old favorites and several tunes that I wasn’t familiar with, but really enjoyed. Every bit of the show was entertaining. Stephin and Claudia carry on like an old married couple… a bit barbed, a bit sweet. And no matter how much you might be prepared for it, Stephin’s voice is amazing live.
About ½ way through Take Ecstasy With Me, the power to the entire auditorium dropped out. Near-total darkness. Sam didn’t miss a beat on the percussive cello part he was playing and the band segued into a bit of a bridge as the safety lights came back on… then the house lights… finally the sound board. Professional.
September 17, 2008 – 9:24 pm
One of my favorite NPR shows is Sound Opinions. The show bills itself as “the World’s ONLY Rock and Roll talk show”. Back in June they aired their ultimate summer songs show. It’s well known that Jim hates summer and especially the beach. I called in last week to their hotline with my pick for a song that Jim should’a put on the list (in fact, as he was intro-ing Wire’s Sand in My Joints, I thought he was going to play my song…)
I just got a call from show producer Todd Bachman letting me know that my call will be used on the show this week!
If you’re in NC, you can listen in to WUNC at 4pm on Saturday to hear the show. After the show has aired, it’ll be available in their podcast. Looks like it’ll be show #147.
They play the calls at the very end of the (hour-long) show.
Update: Here’s a link to download/stream the show.